Mesoplasma florum simplification project

This is a long term project to completely understand the structure and metabolism of one of the simplist living cells, Mesoplasma florum. Mesoplasma florum was chosen as a cell which was inherently non-pathogenic, easy to grow, and simple enough to at least fool myself into thinking I could understand its complexity.

We have complete sequence (Genbank NC_006055) through our efforts and the assistance of Eric Lander at the Whitehead, for which we are very grateful.

The current project is a study of the non-essential genes, through creation of transposon knockouts using the Tn5 transposome technique.

Our next goal is to develop recombination techniques which will allow us to edit the genome in place and intentionally simplify this organism further.